Archives: Songdiving

„Messages ran all over town,
words without sound
condemned me
and left me for dead …

Ride, ride the very thought into the ground,
in the church of lost and found
the angels cry.

Ride, ride until the darkness closes in,
until the ravaged soul begins
to reflect the open skies.“

(David Sylvian)

To analyze and imitate music makes fun: music that I like the most, miss the most or that accompanied me for a long span of lifetime as part of a personal, biografical soundtrack. In the present I rarely listen to tracks or albums of David Sylvian exept they attract me as a kind of „re-entry“: recall, repeat, rework. The ghosts of my life then become wild again, so to speak. Examining „Ride“ now after years of beeing addicted to it manically in times of Everything and Nothing reveals some compositional habits. Putting the Kapo on the second fret (means C Major sounds in D), playing the guitar (not necessarily a red one), starting with the chords F#m, E, C#m, B#m, C# running along the verse works all quite easily. When moving to the chorus something typical in many songs of this special artist happens: a surprising, unusual change into another tonality. This gives us the impression of stepping from one plateau to another, somehow simular to the music of canadian trumpet player Kenny Wheeler. „Silver Moon“ from Gone to Earth might as well fit into this pattern. In „Ride“ it perfectly emphases the uplifting from a depressive mood to some kind of relief. The key change goes from F# minor (verse) to A minor (chorus) which means: three semitone steps up. The chorus follows with Am, G, F, Em, Dm, Em, Dm, C … (Esus4/B). Here comes another typical element of Sylvian´s songs into play: the quality of his voice on one hand disguises and upgrades quite trivial chord progressions (time and again also spiced and saved from pure boredom by the fine drum work of Steve Janssen) and on the other hand connects the different plateaus with tricky and beautiful melodic guidance.

Lyrics (excerpt): Out upon the open fields / The rain is pouring down / We’re pulling up the sheets again / Against the passing tides of love / Every doubt that holds you here / Will find their own way out / I will build a shelter if you call / Just take my hand and walk / Over mountains high and wide / Bridging rivers deep inside / With a will to guide you on / Your heart will need no one / Those days are gone … / Baby, I can tell you there’s no easy way out / Lost inside of dreams that guide you on / Baby, I can tell you there’s no easy way out / Soon the guiding moonlight will be gone …

Fender equipment, fingerpicking style, two tracks. Nothing perfect, just a sketchy notation of anticipating a precious song that became very familiar over the years and has inhabited my memorizing cells paraciticly like so many others did as well. No worries, won´t charge any parking fee for that, just claim to have a cover of my own. In a way „Silver Moon“ is the only „normal“, somehow „folky“ song on Gone to Earth – an album enriched by the guitar work of Robert Fripp and besides containing sampled quotes of Joseph Beuys and Philosopher J.G. Bennett. Last but not least the voice of young DS with its unique beauty put the cherry on the cake. Years later then the Dead Bees followed.

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs of every head he’s had the pleasure to know. And all the people that come and go, stop and say hello. On the corner is a banker with a motorcar, the little children laugh at him behind his back. And the banker never wears a mac in the pouring rain, very strange. In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass and in his pocket is a portrait of the queen. He likes to keep his fire engine clean: it’s a clean machine. Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout, the pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray, and though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway. In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer. We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim. And then the fireman rushes in from the pouring rain, very strange. Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes. There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit, and meanwhile back …